This Is What Pseudoscience Looks Like

Well, with the twin weather disasters of the wild conflagrations in the west and the unusual “derecho” storm (derecho and El Nino – the storms that will do the jobs that American storms won’t) that left millions powerless and sweltering in the east, it didn’t take long for the propaganda mill of the warming religion to spool up. I first noticed it in a tweet from the so-called “science” guy, Bill Nye:

CNN about fires in Colorado. I was just there. It’s the real (bad) deal. Just the start of things climate change-wise.

And this weather has been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren’t having similar disasters now, although they’ve had their own extreme events in recent years.

But after that brief clearing of the narrative throat, he found several of the usual suspects to tell us that this was indeed global warming:

“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn’t listen. So it’s I told-you-so time, he said.

…”What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. “It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters.”

“This is what global warming looks like.” Expect to hear a lot of that theme in the coming days.

But also recall that this is the same Kevin Trenberth who, in October of 2009, expressed his frustration in a leaked email to Michael Mann that the darned planet just would not cooperate with his hysterical prognostications:

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

…The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Again, my emphasis. See, nothing wrong with their models — it’s reality that’s mistaken. And now that Gaia is finally starting to behave properly, at least in the tiny portion of it comprised of the continental U.S., Trenberth is doing a victory dance.

These people are engaged in a form of a logical fallacy called “begging the question” (a phrase often misused by people who simply mean “raising the question”) or circular reasoning. That is, they are assuming as a premise the conclusion of their argument. “Our theory predicts weather like this. We are seeing weather like this. Therefore it looks like our theory and our theory is valid.” But beyond that, what they are putting forth is a fundamentally unscientific theory, because it seems to be unfalsifiable. A few years ago, frustrated by the embarrassingly strong correlation between a speech by high priest Al Gore and record-cold weather at the speaking venue, they realized that they had to stop calling it “global warming,” and just call it “climate change.” Because “climate change” could explain any weather event. A recent Twitter exchange between me and Jason Major, one of the proprietors of the Universe Today web site, illustrates it perfectly:

JPMajor: @Rand_Simberg The trend seems to be shifting toward extremes. Extreme heat, extremely dry, and yes, in some places even extreme wet or cold.

Rand_Simberg: s/A warmer climate/hot weather/ FTFY @JPMajor A warmer climate may not’ve started fires, but it sure helped them burn.

Note the logical pretzels. “Climate change” causes “extremes,” except when it doesn’t and instead causes warm winters and hot summers (in its alter ego “global warming” form), as it did this year, in one location on the globe. It’s a very robust theory — any weather event is apparently evidence for it.

The problem, of course, is that weather like this can exist (and has existed for many decades) without global warming. One of the scientists that Borenstein interviewed but whose input didn’t appear in his story is Judith Curry at Georgia Tech. For those who haven’t been following, she’s been one of the few voices of reason in the climate science community. She posted her responses to his questions at her blog, in a post titled “What Global Warming Looks Like (?). Her summary:

So is this what global warming looks like? Well, this is what the 1930s and 1950s looked like. I have stated many times before that I think the 1950′s (warm AMO, cool PDO) are a good analogue for current weather patterns and extreme events. The good news in this latest episode is that no one seems to be trying to attribute extreme events to AGW; merely saying “this is what global warming looks like.”

Well, sadly, as one can see from the quotes in Borenstein’s piece, from Trenberth and others, and Bill Nye the pseudoscience guy, she was mistaken about the latter. But prepare to hear a lot more of it, unless the rest of July and August turn out to have back-to-normal temperatures. Or maybe that will be what global warming looks like, too. As I said, it’s a robust theory.

Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his weblog, Transterrestrial Musings.

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1.
TJ

What would be the effect of this Global Warming fraud and coercion, if successful? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. Al Gore and the Global Warming fraudsters converted simple changes in the weather into an engine for enslaving mankind to filch wealth and power to themselves. They, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Scientists.

No need to hide behind “climate change”, actual Global Warming is a proven fact right now in the Northern Hemisphere. Case in point, last January the daily high was below freezing for months at a time in Minnesota, yet it hasn’t gotten that cold there for months now. Minnesota is clearly warming quite rapidly, and while that isn’t yet the case for Argentina, I can confidently predict it will be much warmer there next December than it is now. But there is good news about this occurrence. It turns out Global Warming leads to becoming wealthy. Case in point, alGore was a mere Millionaire when he left office, but since he has been promoting his Climate Change agenda, he has become at least a half-Billionaire, and is well on his way to becoming the first Green Billionaire. I can hardly wait for the Earth to warm some more, so I can become at least a multi-Millionaire myself.

Brilliant, Mr. Galt. Expect to see this repeated in a NYT or USA Today multi-colored chart in the near future. Global Warming Finally Proven. Drastically rising average temperatures in North America over the period Jan 1, 2012 through June 30, 2012. “There’s no end in sight! Melting icecaps!”

There are no “voices of reason”, indeed no competent voices, in all of climate science, nor in the debates about it online (see my blog, particularly my article, “Venus: No Greenhouse Effect”). Judith Curry’s web site is a continuing therapy session for those who will not face the all-humbling truth, that there is no “greenhouse effect”, of increasing temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, that has been sold to the people worldwide; she is only interested in “reasonable climate policy”, not in good science, and she cannot see that the latter is needed before one can have the former.

The voice of reason would note that fluid flow with changes in temperature and density are described by the Navier Stokes equations, which are non-linear, chaotic, and show sensitive dependence on initial conditions. That means that long term future states can not be predicted by any set of finite current states.

Since global warming predictions depend on predictions of future states, global warming is a hoax.

The state of the sun also depends on nonlinear differential equations (amplified by a nuclear component!!!) and the sun is much bigger than the earth. It also can not be predicted long term, but the time frame for “long term” is much different.

BINGO, send us your money & we’ll handle the details. “Global warming can only be dealt with if the elites take total control, eliminating 75% of the human race….especially the evil white people. Then our temperature will once again go to the opposite end of the spectrum and mankind will all freeze to death,and mankind will be blamed by the likes of Al Gore for Global Freezing for manipulating population to a much lower level therefore bringing about Global Freezing, but the polar bears will have ice to walk on again.However if nothing is done…the wheat belt may move north by several hundred miles allowing Canadians to grow more wheat and other crops.EEEEWWWWW that would be bad for population control.Best we send Al & his clowns more money to combat GW

I’d love a few days in the 60s, even the 70s, too; there’s been precious few days that the temp has gotten out of the 50s in maritime Alaska this “summer.” It’s cloudy, spitting rain, a balmy 48F, with a S-SW wind off the Pacific in ANC right now and there hasn’t been a day yet that you could truly be comfortable in a tee shirt. But, if you’re the typical progressive, history began with your birth and reality is merely your perception, so history and facts don’t enter much into your thinking.

-At any given altitude on Earth the South has warmer weather than the North.
-One day last week it was warmer in Montana and Minnesota than in the Panhandle of Florida.
Ergo: One day last week it was warmer in Montana and Minnesota than in the Panhandle of Florida.

Compare “this is what global warming looks like” with “this is what democracy looks like”. Both unsupported assertions from the same far-left wing of the body politic, both stated in support of policies that would make us poorer, less free, and more subject to the whims of those mindlessly repeating the slogans.

I’m with Bill Nye on this one, the forest fires are global warming:
- The fires are the result of almost a century of mismanagement based on ideologically driven pseudoscience, global warming is based on 20 years of ideologically driven pseudoscience.
- The forest fires reflect a long term government program that wasted taxpayer money and ultimately destroyed the very assets it was charged with protecting, global warming “study” has wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money and its solutions will destroy the very people it claims to be saving.
- The forest fires are a result of Big Government, the global warming hoax is a result of Big Government.
- The forest fires are the result of fraud, global warming is a fraud.

If the global warming advocates have their way then the civilized world will go the way of the western forests.

Had to re-scan that sentence, too. I think it’s the scientist that’s doing the victory dance, not Gaia. She’s always been a hefty, Venus-of-Willendorf-ish kind of Goddess, and what with the heat and everything She probably lets the nymphs and other imaginary critters do most of the dancing for Her. That’s fine with me. Last thing I need to see is a big ol’ sweaty anthropomorphic personification of Earth’s ecosystem doing the Bertha Butt Boogie in the middle of a cyclical warming period. There’s not enough Lady Speed Stick in the universe to make that right.

24 years ago. 1988. Hottest, driest summer I can remember. Yellowstone burned. Half of lower 48 was in severe drought. Forest fires all over the West. Rivers dried up.

But no global warming to blame (except in the world of James Hansen). Global Warming wouldn’t get it’s official IPCC rollout for another 6 years.

If we get these kind of summers every 24 years, I don’t think we can assert cause and effect. In fact, it’s hard to see a pattern at all.

What’s most annoying is how quiet these bozos are when the weather is “average” [whatever that is]. We’ve had several typical winters and summers, so the warmists went globe trotting to find their extreme weather. I can say, even without a degree in climatology, that there is probably an extreme weather event going on somewhere in the world at any given moment. So if your basis for AWG is extreme weather, you don’t have to look too hard. Of course there wasn’t extreme weather all over the globe 30 years ago, or so they try to make you believe.

And what about hurricanes? After 6 years of pretending that they didn’t predict more and stronger hurricanes that didn’t show up, are they going to go right back to the “global warming = more hurricanes” mantra if we happen to have an active season?

Last winter there was a severe cold spell in Europe, with people freezing to death from Germany to Moscow. That was obviously weather. Now there is a severe hot spell in the Eastern US, that is obviously climate change. Just keep applying the above formula, and you won’t have any trouble using weather events to prove Climate Change.

By that logic, HIV doesn’t cause AIDS because doctors and scientists didn’t figure that out until the 1980s.

Science is a process, it unfolds over time. You can’t honestly argue that a piece of science is wrong simply because it didn’t always exist in its current form at some point in the past. That’s the same argument creationists use all the time.

We are consistently breaking temperature records and guess what, those factor in what temperatures were in 1988 or whatever the hottest temperature was that you “can remember.” Honestly, you’d think all of you smug “skeptics” could understand something as simple as “the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data.’”

We’re mostly breaking records that were set in the early 20th century. The obvious question being, why was it so hot in the early 20th century? Because those records were set long before carbon dioxide reached today’s higher concentrations in the atmosphere. The problem is that climate scientists don’t seem to have much of an explanation to offer for why this is.

It’s a reasonable question to ask, you know. Can you offer an explanation that makes sense? If not, maybe you need to be a bit more skeptical yourself like a real scientist would.

First of all, the reason that the temperature records being broken are from the last 150 years is due to the fact that the instrumentation to properly measure temperature and other climatological features did not exist prior to that, nor was there a plan or system to track these things. This is why scientists have to use proxies like tree rings and ice cores samples for the distant past and is the whole origin of the discussions in the “climategate” emails that have fallaciously been insinuated as evidence of some kind of malfeasance. Those emails were discussing how the tree rings may not be good proxies because they don’t match up well with the years for which we actually do have good instrumentation.

Secondly, you seriously cannot see the obvious explanation for the 20th century being extremely hot compared to the past and you honestly think that climatologists don’t have an explanation? Have you heard of the Industrial Revolution? The Industrial Revolution began in the mid-18th century in England and gradually spread to the rest of the world. It involved burning huge amounts of fossil fuels (especially coal) to power various machines and factories, from trains to steel mills. Burning these fossil fuels dumps copious amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and contributes to warming and various changes in climate. The thing is that CO2 takes time to build up and start exceeding the rate of plant life’s consumption of CO2 in photosynthesis, so the warming did not immediately begin, just as you don’t get lung cancer from your first cigar or cigarette, you have to smoke for many years.

The problem is that our fossil fuel consumption has only grown over the past few centuries, especially as countries like India and China have developed their economies and increased the demand for fossil fuels, cattle (which produce methane), etc. This has caused increased production of greenhouse gases which perpetuates climate change.

“Alright guys, pack things in, we’ve been found out. They know global warming is a hoax because scizzorbill’s daughter says it’s cold in San Diego. If only we could have silenced her before she sent that email. Better notify the Pulitzer committee about scizzorbill.”

an·ec·dote
[an-ik-doht] Show IPA
noun, plural an·ec·dotes or, for 2, an·ec·do·ta [an-ik-doh-tuh] Show IPA.
1.
a short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing nature.
2.
a short, obscure historical or biographical account.

Sorry, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) objectively tracking changes in temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. with state of the art instruments and then comparing that data to existing data sets is NOT anecdotal, nor is it comparable to one person citing their daughter’s perception of her local weather. Nice false equivalency by the way.

When, oh when, will conservatives slap down this bunk by pointing out simple, well known physical evidence:The sun is in its twelfth year of “solar minimum”, the longest in well recorded history that goes back to Galileo.

A sun without solar flares starves the Van Allen readiation belt around the earth. That in turn will result over time in unpredictable terrestial responses whose cummulative effects may be vast and unpredictable. Variations in Earth’s magnetic fields, gradual deviations in atmospheric and oceanic flows and erratic weather.

Solar flares feed gamma radiation to our planet. The loss of the gammas can affect us in ways we haven’t dreamed of, even such things as diminishing the creation of new species.

As an example of far-out, but hard science, the FBI has for decades shown that violence and murder rates in the U.S. increase with solar flare activity, decrease with minimums. But does anyone know how it goes when the minimum goes on and on and on? No! Modern man has just arrived. He has no idea what Nature’s long wave rhythms are. For example: when our satellites had enough years of studying the “ozone hole”, it was concluded that it opened and closed in cycles. The global coolers who had gone over to ozone had to shut up and move on to global warming. Yet you still can’t buy R12 refrigerant or a host of other products because of their ozone frenzies. It’s the sun, idiot!

Our solar satellites that monitor the sun’s internal magnetic fields tell forecasters that a reawakening of the sun is due sometime in 2013-14, and that it will unloose with a fireworks grand finale of flares. All hell will break loose when some of those large and rapid-fire plasma bubbles hit Earth. Electronics, satellites and even weather will be grossly affected. What will the power-grabbers say then? Of course, it’s global cooling-warming-climate change again.

But no one on the right ever debunks the anthro-global warming hysterics with the hard science of our long term dormant sun. Doing so will also pre-empt them continuing the hysteria when the minimum breaks.

I love how it took us years of cooling climate (no substantial global warming since 1998) before they stopped with global warming and swapped to climate change, but after a warm winter (the winter of 1889 was analogous I think) and a couple weeks of triple digit heat, they suddenly feel justified to start screaming “global warming” again.

“More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday.”

Here in CT I just paid my utility bills for the billing period that covered half of May and half of June. According to them this year averaged about 4 degrees cooler than the same period last year and I think I remember that last year may have been cooler than the year before. Doesn’t seem like much but 4 degrees is a pretty significant variance. Before this spring everyone was talking about how the mild winter was evidence of climate change. Not one word about the cooler spring.

Global warming causes global cooling so the greenies can have it both ways. If next year is record cold, then the justification is already in place.
Climate change covers both ends of the boogieman, allowing a greater opportunity to be taxed into the nether world of climate stability. Nature is chaotic, and it will be anti-natural to convert nature into statism. The enviro didn’t want logging so they got fire. Who will pay the carbon tax on Colorado?

“Nature is chaotic.” True. But no liberals and few scientists believe in chaos. It goes against the Humanistic tenets that a) the human mind can understand and predict everything, b) human beings can “master” Nature, and c) all problems can be solved by a cadre of intellectuals with political authority.

And it gets worse: Not only is nature chaotic, but our economic system is, and always will be, chaotic as well. Indeed, no matter how controlling you try to be, there is no way you will be able to predict what 6 billion and some-odd people are going to do with any given regulation you throw at them.

Hence, there was no way to predict, except by hindsight, that Europe’s Carbon Credit Market was going to crash, after all the major “carbon-eaters” (steel, electricity, etc) outsourced their production to places like Africa. Thus, not only were the remaining companies able to “pollute” at will, but those carbon-intensive industries were still producing what Europe needed, with the added bonus of importing their products from even greater distances, and thus adding even more carbon in the air than before.

Yet, even after all this, politicians and certain “scientists” in America point to Europe and say things like “We should have a Carbon Credit program, just like Europe!” or “If only we raise taxes and nudge people into living into artificially crowded cities. Then the climate will get better!”

At some point, we need to stand up and say “Attempting to control one chaotic system by attempting to control another chaotic system is utter madness!”

Used to be a fact-checker for a magazine that was running a Bill Nye article and caught him making a math mistake that a third grader would not have made. Hard to take him seriously since. Although he never claimed to be The Math Guy….

You are aware of exactly how many scientists are “on the government dole,” right? The internet was developed by scientists “on the government dole.” Hmm, it’s almost like scientists care about doing science and there is an incredibly stringent and laborious review process for government-funded science.

No, wait that couldn’t be true, government never does anything right and all scientists working on projects funded by government grants are just a bunch of parasitic welfare queens with PhDs and MDs.

The technology that created the internet infrastructure was created by Xerox. Not the government. The government basically put a shoestring in place using available technology. Then universities and private enterprises (ie., telecommunications companies) built the rest. The idea that the government somehow created the internet is a myth.

“Pfft, who needs packet-switching? Government can’t do anything right, so let’s just pretend the ARPANET, CYCLADES, et al. aren’t important or didn’t happen. AT&T developed UNIX and some hardware, so let’s pretend that governments in the US and Europe did basically nothing.”

I don’t really have stake in it, but isn’t that what’s been happening with evolution since Darwin? When the data don’t match, just rewrite the theory and go “la-la-la” very loudly. The original was replaced by the synthetic theory (somewhere around the time of the Scopes trial, no?), and I don’t know which edition we are on now. But there must be some theory, because the alternative is unthinkable, “heaven forbid”.

I caught Trenberth of the NOAA on the Progressive (née Public) Broadcasting System’s “PBS Newshour” program last week. He was sensitively interviewed by one Judy Woodruff, who at some earlier point in her life may well have been a journalist. The interview was concocted to establish the connection of the recent “extreme” weather conditions with the climate warming/change narrative. Mr. Trenberth was the only interviewée. Other opinions were either unavailable or deemed unnecessary.

Unfortunately, because of my acceptance of a good bit of BF Skinner’s psychological studies, I can’t help but think that once the climate warming/change narrative is cerebrally implanted, it takes very little in the way of reinforcement to keep it alive and in place. What I seem to be seeing in the media these days is more and more subtle and tangential mentions of the narrative without any discussion of even the existence of other scientific alternatives. Thus, the mis-message is reinforced and lives on to erupt at the next climatic opportunity.

I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that, even if the coming election results in a Republican President and a Republican Congress, our other institutions, the media, the education bureaucracy, and the civil service, have been so infiltrated by subversives that the tide of progressivism will ebb not more than a little while it prepares, like climate warming/change, to erupt at its next opportunity.

Bingo. In order to completely get rid of the challenge to the American way of life from its enemies within its borders these things will have to happen:

1.Oust Obama.
2.Oust all Democrats and even so-called moderates or independents (potential lib lapdogs) from Congress and Senate.
3.Complete purge or dissolution of Old Media.
4.Purge of socialists from academic institutions.
5.Bust up Unions. Extensive ties to organized crime will make this a walk in the park without violating civil liberties. Seize union assets and property as part of criminal investigation the way meth labs are seized in Michigan,Kansas,Oklahoma,etc.
6.Deport all illegals and imprison or exile all those ousted in purges,or they will certainly band together in partisan groups and revolt.
7.Replace all curriculum for education established in last 40 years to remove instances of historical revision.
8.Conservatives MUST do a better job of reaching out to youth,their restless,iconoclastic,and rebellious attitudes will never be quelled, and so must be managed more effectively. They don’t care who they’re busting on,they experience free-floating hostility due to their hormones,so throw them liberals to blame,disparage,and attack and they’re part of the solution rather than the problem.They have no particular loyalty to anyone,it’s just that the liberal ideal appeals to their sense of wanting to tear down the things their parents have created. Since most of their parents have been socially liberal,even the “conservative” or “moderate” parents,it should be easy enough to tie the liberals to their parents and hence ramp up the rage at a more personal level.
9.Purge of Wise Latina,Birkenstock,CJ and all traitors from Supreme Court.
10.Completely invalidate the ability of comedians,celebrities,social commentators,satirists,etc on the political left to carry water for and test the ideas of the lib elite in the court of public opinion for them before they implement them as law. Example: “What the hell do you know,Bill Maher (Sean Penn,Roseanne Barr,{insert talking head here}? I didn’t see you in that last quorum call?” (or “Where’s your degree in economics?”)
11.New McCarthy era and LOTS AND LOTS of public investigations to root out all socialists currently poised to enter positions where they may either directly shape or influence laws,or be used to lend validity to the same as scientists,professors,civil servants,etc.It goes without saying these people must also be imprisoned for treason or exiled.
12.Consistently improve prosperity and freedom for all in America for a period of at least 20 years to overcome brainwashing that has occurred for last 40.
13.Give idiot malcontents elusive outside enemy to fear so that they are more concerned with that than attacking those around them to get their kicks in carefree prosperous times.

Of course,all these things will happen about the same time that pigs fly.But I bet at least 1 of the liberal trolls on this site is now wetting himself at the possibility that all of these things COULD possibly happen if the right money and the right people got involved, and ALL of the libs who post here would certainly find themselves in Tijuana trying their multicultural BS with a mexican drug cartel who would certainly then shoot them for being the wrong color in the right company if I had my druthers about it. Screw sending them to Canada,I’d drop them into the same kind of warzone I grew up in.Trying that liberal “Hey,buddy,we’re the same. You grew up in a house with a dirt floor with 15 siblings and I remain an adolescent well into my 30′s in an Ivy League dorm room funded by my parents in a gated community” crap there once means you don’t get a second chance to do anything.

Hmm, I seem to remember a bunch of guys with funny German and Russian names who really liked to “purge,” imprison, exile, etc. dissenters and anyone else they disagreed with and labeled them as “traitors.” They also only allowed information and education which supported their ideology, including providing a convenient enemy for people to focus on to distract them and divert any unrest.

But yeah, whatever.

On a completely unrelated note, liberals sure are total fascists and communists, right?

Actually, no, Darwin posited that it would be a potential objection to his theories…over 150 years ago!

Do you really not understand the sheer volume of research and study done in evolutionary biology over the past 150 years? Do you not think that biologists might have thought about this idea just a bit more than you and, geez, I don’t know, done some actual research?

You also need to understand the simple concept of “the absence of evidence is no the evidence of absence.” Charles Darwin simply had not yet found much fossil evidence of Precambrian organisms, but this didn’t mean it didn’t exist. We have found much fossil evidence since Darwin’s work that not only has provided a plethora of information about evolution, but also actually diminished the “bang” of the Cambrian explosion by showing just how diverse and advanced life was before this “explosion.”

When it comes to hysterical prognostications, it’s hard to beat Goddard Institute’s James Hansen, who predicted parts of New York being under water in 20 years. No need to lose any sleep over it though, as he made the prediction in 1986. Oops.

The IPCC predicted global temps would rise a degree or two in a century. Clearly, current weather conditions have nothing to do with global warming nor are they a good model of future behavior. The sun has been especially inactive well past the time it should have been increasing in activity. If we are to have a peak next year, when it should have been LAST year, the sun better start to cooperate. Decreased solar activity leads to increased cloudiness and increased night-time temperatures thereby skewing the daily averages.

PJ contributor Bill Whittle had a video not too long ago about the “love of theory” and how it is behind a great majority of humanity’s darkest episodes.

To that I would add something about science itself has changed. Empiricism seems to have taken a back seat, and with things like “climate change” it is treated with exasperated annoyance. No, it seems that elaborate theory and modeling have become preeminent over empirical observation, which is an inversion of how it should be. Theory is supposed to be a cogent explanation of observed phenomena. The trouble for the warmists is that empirical data since the late 1990s have stubbornly refused to corroborate their theory, and have in fact refuted much of it.

So what would a proper scientist do? Chuck the theory, because empirical data have an unimpeachable veto power. Instead, we see from ClimateGate that these frauds have instead colluded in obfuscating the data that challenge their theory.

So in love with their theory and the fiefdoms that have built up around it, they are willing to do lasting damage to the pursuit of truth and contribute to a diminished existence for the rest of humanity.

“Chuck the theory, because empirical data have an unimpeachable veto power.”

Thank you. You have just described (what should be) the essence of honest science. Where we (might) disagree is that I think (and have seen in my experience) that this type of science goes on every day. And every incidence of dishonest science should be exposed and expunged from the discussion.

Why do I never hear speculation about the possibility of geo-engineering from conservative/libertarian commentators? I know Bill Whittle is into aeronautics…has he chimed in on this, and if not, why not? I, for one, do not buy the “lingering contrails” and “increased air traffic” explanation that is always offered, along with a condescending and dismissive pat on the head. Our skies have NOT always been white and hazy, rainbows around the sun were never common prior to this decade, and contrails never hung around for hours after the plane went by when I was a kid. And don’t get me started on those weird, dappled skies…according to the NOAA website, cirrocumulus clouds are uncommon, so why do I see them all the time here in Southern CA?

What in the world are they spraying, and why won’t anyone talk about it? The government does studies as to the effect of cow farts on the ozone layer, but yet the very visible and lingering crap being spewed out of the back of jet planes is off-limits?

I am a PJTV subscriber; I am educated, (mostly) sane, well-informed, and only vote Republican… please don’t relegate me to the back row with the homeopathic, transcendental, Mother Earth-worshipping nutjobs!

I don’t know about “derecho” (I think it’s a derivation of the Spanish word for “straight”), but El Nino (I don’t have a tilde on my keyboard), refers to it’s from the Chilean reference to “The Christ Child”, since it was a phenomenon that occurred around Christmas time (summer in the southern hemisphere), as a change in water temperature and the temporary collapse of the sardine fishery.

“These people are engaged in a form of a logical fallacy called “begging the question” (a phrase often misused by people who simply mean “raising the question”) or circular reasoning. That is, they are assuming as a premise the conclusion of their argument. “Our theory predicts weather like this. We are seeing weather like this. Therefore it looks like our theory and our theory is valid.”

To be absolutely fair, that is not an example of cyclical reasoning. Cyclical reasoning would be saying something along the lines of “The Gods are punishing us for our sins with heat and drought.” and then responding to a query like “How do we know the Gods are punishing us for our sins?” with something along the lines of “Because we have drought and it’s too hot.”

The example you outlined is simply an example of sloppy science. The way science determines things is by coming up with hypotheses like “If climate change is occurring, we should see heat and drought becoming more frequent” and if that happens then you can say “Climate change may be occurring,based on increased heat and drought.” BUT one must also account for OTHER things that could produce heat and drought, and I’m afraid I’ll leave it at that because I am not a meteorologist and attempting to come up with examples of such variables would only make me look foolish. I do,however,know a bit about the scientific method,having been a big fan of science my entire life until it again became a platform for political zealots to push nutty ideas to the public under the banner of “Hey,it’s a scientific fact!”. I believe the last time the scientific community sunk this low is when it briefly lent its seal of approval to the idea that blacks were more closely related to monkeys than whites.